Coaching Techniques to Develop Team Members
This Monthly Best Praxis has tips for leaders to utilize coaching techniques to develop team members.
Coaching is a partnership, where the coach partners with the coachee through a question-based creative process to find inspired solutions. The coach respects and believes in the coachee's expertise and acts as a partner to help unlock potential.
As a leader, you should practice coaching techniques when:
You can prioritize time to dedicate to a partnership conversation
Your team member is bought-in to your shared goals
Your team member has foundational skills
To step into the coach position you want to:
Ask about your team member’s goals and stay focused on their goal and outcome.
Trust your team member’s expertise and be aware of your own bias and assumptions.
Create a space for trust and vulnerability by withholding judgments, practicing empathy, and listening actively.
Ask open questions and questions that shift perspectives to evoke awareness.
Ask questions about new awareness and learning and their desired next steps and accountability.
You have an opportunity to coach to help your team members consider:
How to apply the knowledge they have
How to analyze
How to evaluate
How to create
When coaching try to ask questions without bias from your assumptions or experience, but rather to draw on your team members' experience and expertise.
To practice coaching start by practicing active listening and coaching questions such as:
What have you learned? What do you know? What information do you have on this?
How can you apply this? What are your next steps? How do you want to move forward?
What do you observe? What do you take away? How can you analyze the information in front of you?
What is important about this? How is this meaningful? What is the impact? What is the value?
What is possible? What opportunities arise? How can you create more value, and opportunity, what they are looking for? What would be possible without barriers? What would you want to see in a perfect world?
Other than listening actively an easy way to practice coaching techniques as a leader is to begin asking more open questions.
Closed questions restrict a response and open questions allow for a wide variety of answers. There is a place and value for both closed and open questions.
Obvious closed questions are yes or no questions or any lists of options to choose between. Closed questions are also questions with qualifiers that limit the response.
Closed: "What is the best agenda for our Thursday meeting to help us achieve our goals?"
More Open: "What is the best agenda for our Thursday meeting?"
More Open: "What will help to achieve our goals in Thursday's meeting?"
More Open: "What are your thoughts on Thursday's meeting?"
Most Open: "What's on your mind?"
When you close the question you limit the opportunity in response. Practice more open questions and see what you learn.
Not every question should be open. But observe:
-How often are you asking open questions?
-How open are your questions?
-How often are you asking closed questions?
-How do things change if you shift your approach?
To practice coaching more as a leader start by identifying the moments when you should coach. Then commit to 1-2 techniques you want to test out and see if you get your desired results.
Resources to Coach for Development
Coaching Techniques
Read more about practicing coaching techniques as a leader here.
Learn how to practice coaching techniques as a leader.
To evoke awareness in coaching start with listening for understanding.
Coaching and training are both effective and useful tools for development. Learn about the differences to be strategic in your approach.
About Talent Praxis
Praxis is bridging the gap between theory and action.
We help companies and leaders practice proven academic management theories in the workplace to build results-driven teams.
Management and leadership are not skills you learn once but rather ongoing practices to achieve results.
Talent Praxis offers one-on-one leadership coaching, training in people management, and consulting in performance management to help leaders and companies develop their own strategic praxis.
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